Bayreuth Festival to put on first opera premiere since 1882

For the first time since Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" debuted in 1882, this summer's Bayreuth Festival plans to premiere a new opera.

The new work by Austrian composer Klaus Lang, "The Lost Bridegroom," based on an old Austrian legend, is scheduled to be shown as part of the Bayreuth Discourse 2018, an accompanying programme to the world-renowned annual music festival.

Howver, the opera is not due to be performed at the main Bayreuth Festival Theatre, or Festspielhaus, but rather at a historic cinema in the centre of the town in the southern state of Germany.

The premiere represents an expansion of the Bayreuth Festival's artistic offering, a spokesman said on Saturday, adding that the festival had not originally been conceived to preserve the established, but rather to dare to try something new.

Stage direction is by Paul Esterhazy, while video artist Friedrich Zorn is also involved in the production, which is due to hit the stage on July 24 - the day before the main festival starts.

The festival itself is due to focus on the last 10 operas written by composer Richard Wagner (1813-83).

The works of other composers are only rarely featured at the Festspielhaus, most recently last year for the centenary of the birth of former Festival Theatre director Wieland Wagner, when excerpts from Giuseppe Verdi and Alban Berg joined Richard Wagner's music on the stage.